Serial setup with C-Kermit

When you work with embedded devices (e.g. SabreLite, Arduino,
Raspberry Pi) you often need to work over a serial port, e.g. to
customize the Barebox or U-Boot boot loader.

On Linux, people often use “minicom” for this. Other options are
“Putty” (yes, it’s not a Windows-only program, try “apt-get install
putty”) or even the ancient C-Kermit.
Surprisingly I found that Kermit suits my work-flow the best, when
properly configured.

The reason: Kermit doesn’t come into my way. No menu, no
interpretation of escape codes (so urxvt does that), no nothing.

Installation

On Debian, installation is as easy as:

apt-get install ckermit

Configuration

Place this into ~/.kermrm:

set line /dev/ttyS0
set baud 115200
set handshake none
set flow-control none
set carrier-watch off
set escape-character ^X
log session ~/.kermlog
connect

set serial port (if you don’t have a real RS232, use /dev/ttyUSB0
instead)

set baud rate. We have the year 2016, so there’s no need to run
anything slower than 115200 baud nowadays. Even Windows 7 (or newer)
can nowadays use this baud rate.

turn all handshaking off. Embedded devices often only use 3 wires
(RXD, TXD and GND) for their communications anyway.

for the same reason, turn of carrier detection

allow “Ctrl-X” as an escape character

write a log of the whole transaction to ~/.kermlog

and connect

Keyboard control

When I want to disconnect, I type “Ctrl-X q” (q like quit).

If i ever want to get to Kermit command prompt (which I almost never
do), then “Ctrl-X c” does the trick.